martes, 8 de mayo de 2018

Most Poles accept Jews as fellow citizens and neighbors, but a minority do not

Poland recently enacted a libel law
aimed at punishing those who publicly accuse Poles of complicity in the
Holocaust or other crimes against humanity. The new law has raised concerns that the country’s history of anti-Semitism and xenophobia in Poland could be obscured.

In
today’s Poland, most adults say they are willing to accept Jews as
fellow citizens, neighbors and family members, according to a Pew Research Center survey
of Poland and other countries in Central and Eastern Europe conducted
in 2015 and 2016. For instance, about seven-in-ten or more Poles say
they would accept Jews as neighbors or fellow citizens.

At
the same time, however, a sizable minority of Polish adults take the
opposite position. Almost one-in-five Poles (18%) say they would not be
willing to accept Jews as citizens of their country, and a similar share
(20%) say they would not want Jewish neighbors. Nearly a third of
Polish adults (30%) say they would not accept a Jewish person as a
member of their family.

Polish views are more negative when it comes to two other minority groups in Europe: Muslims and Roma
(sometimes called Romani or Gypsies, a term some consider pejorative).
Roughly four-in-ten or more Polish adults say they would not want
Muslims to be citizens of their country (41%), their neighbors (43%) or
members of their family (55%). Likewise, at least three-in-ten Poles
would not accept Roma as fellow citizens (30%), neighbors (38%) or
family members (49%).

Polish attitudes toward Jews are
typical of the public’s views in many of the 17 other countries Pew
Research Center surveyed in Central and Eastern Europe. For example,
nearly as many Russians as Poles (14% vs. 18%) say they are unwilling to
accept Jews as citizens of their country, while a higher share of
Russians than Poles (40% vs. 30%) say they are unwilling to accept Jews
as family members.

There
are no major differences when looking at attitudes toward Jews through
the lens of the region’s predominant religious groups – Orthodox
Christians and Roman Catholics. While there is considerable variation
across countries, the attitudes of the region’s Orthodox Christians are,
for the most part, similar to those of Catholics. For example, similar
shares of Orthodox Christians and Catholics across the region (medians
of 17% and 16%, respectively) say they would not want Jews as neighbors.
The same holds true for opinions about Jews as citizens and family
members.

Attitudes toward Jews are closely related to questions
about cultural diversity and national identity. Nearly six-in-ten Poles
(57%) say it is better if a society is composed of people with the same
ethnic, religious and cultural background than if the society contains
people of differing nationalities, religions and cultures. Roughly
two-thirds of Polish adults (64%) also link their religion to national
identity, saying it is important to be Catholic to be “truly Polish.”
And 55% of Poles agree with the statement, “Our people are not perfect,
but our culture is superior to others.” In general, in Poland and many
countries throughout the region, people who take these kinds of
nationalistic positions are more likely to express negative views of
Jews and other minorities.

Poland’s association with the
Holocaust stems in part from the fact that some of the most notorious
Nazi extermination camps, including Auschwitz-Birkenau and Treblinka,
were located on its territory. It is estimated that during World War II
the Germans murdered 3 million or more Jewish citizens of Poland.

The
new libel law, which contains exemptions for academic and artistic
expression, allows prosecutors to seek fines or prison sentences for
anyone who publicly accuses Poles of helping to perpetrate the Holocaust
or other crimes against humanity. The Polish government says the new
law is intended to stop the use of misleading language,
such as “Polish death camps,” noting that the whole nation suffered
during the Nazi occupation and that an estimated 3 million Polish
gentiles also perished during the war. But the governments of the United
States, Israel and other countries say that the new statute will stifle free expression.